Topic: Pokemon Legends Arceus

@jump This is my main criticism, and I very much felt the same about Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee.

I also worry - with the emphasis being on catching not only every Pokemon, but multiple of every Pokemon -that this will have very low replay value compared to earlier titles.

That said, also still trying to articulate my thoughts, but on balance I'm really impressed and this is the most exciting Pokemon has been in years. Overall I'm really enjoying myself and I do hope they take a lot from this game forward into future entries, but there's also a lot from the older games that I'm missing.

But Pokemon should be the most important thing in a Pokemon game.

Yeah, I feel no connection to my Pokemon because I have no team. I catch like a hundred Pokemon a session (even if it is just four Pokemon caught 25 times each), so my squad is rotating so rapidly I have no time to form any bonds. And what do I do with all these spare Pokemon, can I just release them now or does that roll back Pokedex progress?

Good to know, thank you. I have like four boxes to empty, haha.

On the other side of it the way it kinda pushes you towards moving Pokemon in and out of your team does kinda force you to use more Pokemon. The usual games I find I pretty much stick with the same team for most of the game. And obsess over team composition and moves. I almost find it kinda freeing to pretty much not care at all about it......

With that said I still have my starter, Luxray with elemental bites and a ghost, water and rock/ground type. So my team is actually fairly stable

I dunno, even though I’m catching a ton of Pokémon, my core team itself is pretty stable.

Ugh the star grind is rough. I am trying to get to four stars and I'm having to take regular breaks as I am already starting to feel so burnt out. You complete like two Pokedex entries and catch like 20 Pokemon and you're lucky to get like 400 points... only 1800 more to go! Such a grind. Like if you're obsessively completionist driven I am sure this is lovely, but for someone like me who just wants to progress, being trapped on this MMO style treadmill is not fun to me at all.

Gotta say, I love the QOL improvements in this one. I can nickname my Pokemon in the menus. Don't have to manually cancel evolutions every time. Can customize my Pokemon's moveset freely. And I really like the sense of danger that comes from challenging some of these Pokemon now.

It's also nice to be able to run around and do my own thing without triggering NPC cutscenes every five minutes.

This is the most fun Pokemon has been in a long time.

Now just integrate these features into mainline. I also like the structure of traditional Pokemon games, but give them challenge, great QOL improvements, more of a gameplay focus, and larger environments to explore between gyms.

@Pokester99 Yeah, I really hope they don't revert back when the inevitable next mainline game where you challenge gym leaders in a new region comes out. Just integrate these elements into a new region.

At this point, I think I'm done buying Pokemon games if they roll back these changes. Some stuff will obviously stay in this game (I can't imagine the whole 'wild Pokemon attacking you in the field' thing is gonna stick), but there's no reason to change aspects that would improve the experience of playing these games as a whole.

Yeah, it is my main takeaway as well. The best parts of Arceus are the smaller, subtle changes. Evolution, move sets, battle initiation, Pokemon catching etc these are all great changes which freshen up the core of the game without changing anything too drastically.

...I just really don't like anything else around it to be honest, at least so far. Mostly because there is barely any game here. It is like they stripped it back to the fundamentals with the intention of building something new on top of it, but then ran out of time, so only the foundation is left. I have to assume we'll see multiple DLCs for this and by the end of those we'll have the complete game we should have had at the start.

I mean Sword and Shield basically did this as well, but that at least had the typical formula to fall back onto to give that game shape. It had actual story, characters and progression. This is just the barebones of a game.

tbh, there's not much this game doesn't do better than SwSh so far. Other than trainer battles and mindlessly fast-tracking the player through the game, I guess. The last few Pokemon games were on full autopilot the entire time.

I guess I can't speak to the story yet, but I've heard good things, so we'll see.

Eh, I wasn't trying to necessarily say one is objectively better than the other, if that came across then I apologise.

I just mean the more freeform and experimental loop of Arceus just so far hasn't really been for me.

Linear is often looked at like a dirty word in gaming these days, but as someone who doesn't have a huge amount of time to play games and is honestly not that great at them, a game that gives me a very clear path, rewards me along the way and puts easily climeable blockers in my way is a game I want.

Sure the Pokemon formula may be tired or whatever else, but I played Shield and in like 75 hours experienced basically no frustration at all. I don't remember the last time I did that with a game and to me, that is a great thing. I know some people only see meaning in gaming if there is great struggle to overcome, but I'm frankly just not good enough to overcome those great struggles so I just get stuck, give up and get frustrated.

And it isn't even necessarily that Arceus is hard, I mean it is hard in places, but it's the lack of linearity that really hurts it for my taste. You're given a new location, a suite of new Pokemon to interact with and maybe a sentence of story to give that location some sort of context and to give you some vague goal to resolve. For the first three zones, I didn't think this was good exactly, but I could live with it because the game was so formless that nothing ever stuck around long enough for me to really sit and make any objective statements on quality.

Then the climb to four star presented itself and I'm just stuck doing these tedious, busy work quests, devoid of all purpose or meaning so I can progress. What little story there is to give this place context is already long resolved, but here I am trapped on this treadmill, because people complained the games were too easy.

I think this just sucks, I don't know how anyone can look at the structure of this and think it's better than the more typical journeys you take on a Pokemon game. Yes, it's different, but different doesn't automatically mean better.

OH MY GOD I JUST GOT HISUIAN GOODRA.
IT'S.
SO.
CUTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

(also it is the biggest mood I've ever seen)

I'm so happy everyone is liking the game just as much as me!

@Pizzamorg Do you mean side quest? because I don't think you need to do side quest to level up.

As to why I think this game is better? Its not that its better, its that its different, and different is fresh, and with fresh on top of the things this game does better then other's, makes for a great game in my eyes.

The bosses so far are what totem pokemon should have been, not puzzle's where I have to run into a million pokemon before I can even do the puzzle, its nice.

And there I was thinking maybe the stars were a bit too easy to level up. They’ve been going up like crazy for me.

On the subject of team building, while I’ve been trying to rotate to level up the investigation progress of a few rarer Pokémon (you don’t need to do all the things in the checklist, only until they go to research level 10), I’ve been actually getting attached to the Pokémon as they become more and more useful. So my team has been setting itself up as I go.

It’s basically impossible to catch the harder Pokémon on poke balls and stealth alone, and you pretty much need a strong team with good coverage if you want to get the alphas.

Btw the third boss encounter did have openings to battle it, you had to send your Pokémon in after stopping it’s big attack.

@Eel If you throw its favorite food, and get a backshot, its almost a decent chance, Now I got this big luxray with me LOL. But I agree, It normally takes more then one try to catch them, and you probably going to have to place a states on them as well.

And here I thought I was going through them quickly as well, i'm 5 star, I kinda feel like i'm leveling up to fast, one place I ended up catching 38 pokemon, and almost filled up the XP.

@Fizza Its pre evo looks goofy to me TBH, the good kind of goofy, It looks like a round jello looking thing.

Oh have you guys seen mr. mime? if you let it out of its poke ball, or just see it about, you can see it drinking some "tea" wile sitting in a "chair".

So far the only bigger alpha Pokémon that stayed in the first pokeball and didn’t get instantly aggro with me was ambipom 😢

Chansey was funny case because while I did have to battle it and it took forever to catch it, it only had one normal type offensive move. My Typhlosion was just there, being completely unaffected.

On the case of funny poses, Machoke sometimes does a “my liege” kneeling pose, and Ursaring sits down in the cutest way.

Something wierd happened last night. Tossed a poke ball at one of those noble Pokémon( red eyed ones. Hopefully I said that correctly lol), and I caught it at a level 35 when my team was at about 16-19. I didn't even have to battle it and I was successful. But then I tried doing the same for another one which was a much Lower level and it wouldn't work. Any thoughts why that could happen? Doesn't seem to make sense. I was going to put it in my party but I assumed it won't follow my commands.